The only past or current member of Van Halen/Hagar/Danniels to utter a single word in public this year has been Sammy Hagar. Making a live appearance at the Sundance film festival earlier in the year, Sammy was of course asked if he knew anything about the current status of VH and if he had talked to them. Turns out that Sammy hadn't talked to any of them since September 1996. This ended speculation that he was back in the band, leaving of course, only one viable candidate for the job, the best candidate, the original, the one who created the position in the first place, DAVID LEE ROTH.

Dave has been silent. Gary has been silent. Eddie, Mikey, and Alex have been silent. Official word of the dickhead mamager who ruined the band, Ray Danniels, being fired has never been released. Only one common denominator fits here... Legal issues (most likely begun by Danniels to get money he neither earned nor deserves from the band) are what is keeping all of them silent and keeping the new Van Halen album and tour from progressing.

As for Cherone's departure, theories have ranged everywhere from WB suits demanding the return of DLR to Gary volunteering to walk away because he himself realized the chemistry wasn't there, to the band not liking Cherone's political activism (Last summer he wrote an "open letter" to Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, which was used by a "pro-life" organization for publicity, and just weeks before his firing, Cherone appeared in an interview on the Fox network defending his beliefs)

The aborted VD III sequel (working title "Left For Dead" -and no I didn't make that up) will probably never see the light of day. I wouldn't even expect for bootlegs of this to surface, since the 1985 5150 demos w/Dave and the lost Van Hagar song "Between Us Two" remain tightly locked away in Eddie's vault.

If any of the music itself was worthy of the Van Halen sound, it just might resurface in a totally rewritten form by the real Van HALEN. Cherone is said to be working on both his first solo album as well as the soundtrack for a movie called "The Habit" in which he also has a small acting role.